Here is a preview of the final image for this tutorial: (click to enlarge)

PSD File for this Tutorial

You can have this PSD File for only $2.00 via Paypal! Click the link below and you will be taken to the Paypal checkout page, after payment you will be redirect to the download page automatically.

Ok let’s get started!

To complete this tutorial, you will need the following stocks:

Ground

City

Cloud Right

Cloud Left

Cloud Overlay

Girl

Watercolor Brushes

Step 1

Create a new document sized 1200px * 1200px, fill the background layer with Black colour. Load the Ground stock image into Photoshop, select the lower half of the image with the Rectangular Marquee Tool, as shown below:

Copy and paste the selection onto our canvas, as shown below:

Erase the top edges of the texture, as shown below:

Name this layer as “Ground”, apply the following Black and White adjustment layer to it:

and here is the effect so far:

Step 2

Load the City texture into Photoshop, select the building portion of the image as shown below:

Don’t worry if the selection is not precise, this is not important in this tutorial.

Copy and paste the selection onto our canvas, resize and position the new layer as shown below:

Now we want to hide certain portion of the city building. So we can add the following mask to this city building layer:

As you can see, here we not only used a soft round brush, but also the Watercolor Brushes we downloaded before for the edges of the building, plus a feathered rectangular marquee tool:

and here is the effect after the masking:

Name this layer as “City”, apply the following Black and White adjustment layer to it: (make sure to tick the “use previous layer as clipping mask” option)

and here is the effect so far:

Step 3

Load the Cloud Right stock image into Photoshop, copy the entire image, and paste it onto our canvas.

Put the new layer below the “City” layer, resize and position the new layer as shown below:

Add the following layer mask to this cloud layer:

Name this layer as “Cloud Right”, apply the following Black and White adjustment layer to it: (make sure to tick the “use previous layer as clipping mask” option)

Duplicate this cloud right layer once, apply the following motion blur to the duplicated layer:

This will smoothen the cloud and add a bit more motion into the image.

Apply the same black and white adjustment layer as depicted in the original cloud right layer to the duplicated layer, reduce the opacity of the duplicate to around 40%, you will have the following effect:

Step 4

Load the Cloud Left texture image into Photoshop. Select a portion of texture with Lasso Tool (50px feather) as shown below:

Copy and paste the selection onto our canvas, put the layer above the “Cloud Right” layer, but below the “City” layer, resize it as shown below:

Erase the excessive portion with a soft brush as shown below:

Name this layer as “Cloud Left”, apply the following Black and White adjustment layer to it: (make sure to tick the “use previous layer as clipping mask” option)

here is the effect so far:

Step 5

Load the Girl texture image into Photoshop. Use the Lasso Tool to make a selection around the girl and the snake, as shown below: (set feather to 40px)

Copy and paste the selection onto our canvas, put the new layer above all other layers, resize and position it as shown below:

Name this layer as “Girl”, apply the following Black and White adjustment layer to it: (make sure to tick the “use previous layer as clipping mask” option)

and here is the effect so far:

Step 6

Load the Cloud Overlay texture image into Photoshop, copy and paste the entire image onto our canvas, as shown below:

Name this layer as “Cloud overlay”, apply the following Black and White adjustment layer to it: (make sure to tick the “use previous layer as clipping mask” option)

Change the blending mode of this layer to “Screen” and opacity to 30%, you will have the following effect:

Cloud overlay is a perfect way to add lighting dynamics and increase the depth for your image. Experiment with it and you will find it very useful when it comes to add extra flavor to your design.

Step 7

Now we pretty much set the overall layout for this city scene. Now we add some more contrast and colour onto it to make it look sci-fi.

Add the following adjustment layers (and their relevant masks) on top of all layers:

Curves

Mask

Attention: for the following 2 colour balance adjustment layer, use the watercolour brushset on the mask for more painting and realistic effect.

Colour Balance Right (set blending mode to “soft light”)

Mask

Colour Balance Rest of the image

Mask

Levels

Mask

and here is the effect so far:

Step 8

We’re nearly finished! I decided to add more contrast to the left side of the image, especially on the left edge of the high-rise in the centre. So I further added the following two adjustment layers:

Hue and Saturation

Mask

Brightness and Contrast

Mask

and here is the effect so far:

You can see now the building is highlighted and as a result, the image has more lighting depth.

Step 9

I feel the right side of the image is a bit boring compare with the left. So I create a new layer on top the background layer, and use the water colour brush to paint some textures on the centre right portion, beneath the buildings:

And you will have the following effect as a result:

That’s it for this tutorial! I sharpen the image with the “Reduce Noise” filter and add some abstract lines on the girl, and here is my final result: (click to enlarge)

Lastly, I would like to stress that you will find the “Black and White” filter and the “Water Colour” style brushsets will be extremely useful when it comes to photo manipulation. Experiment with them :)

Till next time, have a great day!

Here is a preview of the final effect I have for this tutorial: (click to enlarge)

PSD File for this Tutorial

You can have this PSD File for only $2.00 via Paypal! Click the link below and you will be taken to the Paypal checkout page, after payment you will be redirect to the download page automatically.

OK let’s get started!

To complete this tutorial, you will need the following stocks:

Beach

Mountain

Girl

Planet

Step 1

Create a new document sized 1400px * 800px, leave the background layer as white, load the “Beach” image into Photoshop. Copy and paste the entire image onto our document, resize it as shown below:

The reason we do is that we only want the sand portion of the image to show at this stage, and we will manipluate the cloud portion later on in the tutorial.

Name this layer as “beach”, add the following mask to hide the sky/cloud portion on this layer:

and here is the effect after applying this layer mask:

Add the following three adjustment layers on top of this “beach” layer:

Black and white

Set blending mode to “Soft Light” for this black and white adjustment layer.

Curves

Colour Balance

Here is the effect so far:

Step 2

Now we can tackle the sky/cloud portion of the image. We use the same texture as in the previous step, but this time we select a portion of the sky and paste it onto our canvas.

To add variartion to the image, I copy and paste two different portion of the sky onto our canvas: (One to the left, the other one to the right)

Use a soft brush to erase the edge of the sky to blending them together:

Add the following adjustmnet layer to the sky to the left:

I know when I add the mountain texture later on, the right side of the skpe will probably be covered be the mountain, the left side will therefore become a light source, so the adjustment layer is to emphasise this portion.

and here is the effect so far:

Step 3

Load the “Girl” texture into Photoshop, cut out the girl using whatever selection method you prefer (don’t worry about the edge) and paste it onto the canvas as shown below:

Create a new layer on top of the girl layer called “shadow”, set the blending mode to “Soft Light” and opacity to around 60%, use a soft brush with black colour  to paint some shadow under the girl and to the right, as shown below:

Add another layer on top of the shadow layer called “light”,set the blending mode to “soft light” and opacity to 60%, this time use a soft round brush with White Colour and do a single click in the position as shown below:

and here is the overall effect so far:

Step 4

Load the “Mountain” texture into Photoshop, select the mountain portion of the image as shown below: (I used the Quick Selction Tool)

Copy the selection and paste it onto our canvas, name this new layer as “mountain right”, erase the edges with a soft eraser, as shown below:

Add the following two adjustment layers to this mountain right layer, make sure to tick “use previous layer as clipping mask” option:

Curves

Colour Balance

add the following layer mask to the colour balance adjustment layer: (this will hide the rest the layer, and leave only the river portion)

Duplicate the “mountain right” layer once and drag it to the top, flip it horizontally and drag it to the left hand side of the canvas, erase the right and top edges as shown below:

Add the following two adjustment layers to this mountain right layer, make sure to tick “use previous layer as clipping mask” option:

Curves

here is the effect so far:

Step 5

Now we can do some tweaks so each of the objects blend together with each other. Add the following adjustment layers (and their relevant layers masks) on top of all layers:

Vibrance

Colour Balance

Mask:

Curves

Mask

Of course with the colour balance layer, you can try out your own colour combination and see what result that brings you.

Optionally, you can add one more colour balance layer on top and add some warm colours on the bottom. Here are my settings for the second colour adjustment layer:

Mask:

and here is the overall effect so far:

Step 6

Load the planet stock image into Photoshop, cut out the plaent and paste it onto our canvas in the position as shown below:

Apply the following mask to this planet layer:

Change the blending mode to “Soft Light” and reduce the opacity to 50%, you will have the following effect:

Step 7

We can add some misty/fog effect on the image – instead of using textures, we use this fractal brushset to paint some texture around the image, as shown below: (paint on a new layer, with soft light blending mode and a 30-50% opacity)

Hint: try to mix the Warp Tool (Ctrl + T and right-click to choose warp) and the fractal brushset for better effect:

Of course you’re free to experiement and paint those fogs in a different position :)

Step 8

Now we’re pretty much done! However we can add some final adjustments to the image.

We simply flatten the image, duplicate the background layer, and apply the following High Pass filter to the duplicated layer:

Change the blending mode to “Hard light”, you will find your effect become sharpened and clearer:

That’s it! I also tried to add some colour to the image by having one more Colour Balance adjustment layer, with the following settings:

Mask

You can also try out adding more adjustment layers such as Curves or Levels to add more lighting contrast.

and here is the final effect I have for this tutorial: (click to enlarge)

That’s it for this tutorial! Hopefully you learn something out of it and find it inspirational!

Cheers and have a great day!

In this post, I will share my collection of 100+ Great Vintage Textures and Photoshop Brushsets to Decorate Your Design. Hopefully they will be of use to you and expand your own vintage collection.

Here goes the list, enjoy!

Textures

Pretty Things – icon texture 1 by ~manila-craze

Vintage III Texture Pack by =cloaks

vintage texture 1 by ~H-D-STOCK

15 textures: art + vintage by =jocosity

vintage diamonds by *DyingBeautyStock

Textures02 – Vintage Floral by ~crazymegan

Vintage Textures Pk1 by =inspyretash-stock

Cracked Wallpaper by ~AboveVintage

Vintage Grunge Texture Pack by =powerpuffjazz

Vintage Musk by ~AsunderStock

Photoshop Brushes

Old Postage Stamp Brushes

vintage grunge brushes by ~alex16

Vintage Images + Ephmera by ~akw04

11 brushes of vintage Harley-Davidson’s

1940 Cosmopolitan Brushes

Vintage Fractal Grunge Brushes by ~WebTreatsETC

Vintage Paper Brushes by ~fiftyfivepixels

Vintage Toys Photoshop Brushes by ~FidgetResources

Vintage Clocks-PS Brushes by ~fiftyfivepixels

Wanted Poster

Old Paper Brushes V by ~lailomeiel

That’s it for this post! Hopefully you will find those textures and brushes useful for your vintage design.

Until next time, have a great day!

Hope you enjoy those works as much as I did and find them inspirational! Meanwhile, if you have some cool designs and would like to share them here, you can simply join the PSD Vault Flickr group.

If you like those works, then show those awesome designers some support! Click on the image to visit the author’s flickr page and drop them a comment :)

Here goes the list, enjoy!

That’s it for this post! Hope you enjoy it and find it inspirational!

Until next time, have a  nice day!

In this post, I included 25 Excellent Grunge Style Fonts Perfect for Abstract Design out of my collections of fonts, hope you like them and find them useful.

Inked God

28 Days Later

Rough Linen

Pulse Sans Virgin

Trashco

Broken Ghost

Gridlock’d

Times New Yorker

Soul Mission

Neo print

Laundromat

Jamai Stevie

Karabine

Grutch Shaded

Everyday Ghost

Desperado

Extravaganza

F-Rotten

Killed DJ

Rusted Plastic

That’s it for this post! Hope you enjoy it and find it useful!

Till next time, have a nice day!

The technique I would like to emphasise in this tutorial is how you can use the cloud filter to add contrast to object, and the important of using the correct blending mode for layers to maximise the effect.

You will also see by choosing a great quality texture, you can easily add extra effect to your design with mimimum effort.

Here is a preview of the final image: (click to enlarge)

PSD File for this Tutorial

You can have this PSD File for only $2.00 via Paypal! Click the link below and you will be taken to the Paypal checkout page, after payment you will be redirect to the download page automatically.

Ok let’s get started!

To complete this tutorial, you will need the following stock:

Sword

Crack Texture

Step 1

Create a new document sized 1000px * 1300px, fill the background layer with black color. Load the “Sword” texture into Photoshop and cut out the sword using whatever method you prefer (I used the magic wand here, set tolerance to 32px), then paste it onto our canvas, as shown below:

You can choose a different angle for the sword if you like, totally up to you. The steps below will still apply.

Name this layer as “sword”. On this layer, apply the following “Reduce Noise” settings to it:

and you will see by doing so, we managed to get a few more details out of the sword image, as shown below:

Load the selection of the sword layer by holding down Ctrl key + left-click the thumbnail image of the sword layer on the layer palette. Then hit Ctrl + Alt + R to bring up the Refine Edge tool, apply the following settings:

and you will have the following effect for the selection:

Now we’re ready for the cloud rendering in the next step.

Step 2

Create a new layer called “cloud 1″ on top of the “sword” layer, maintain the selection we did in previous step, render some cloud within the selection, as shown below: (set back and foreground colour to be black and white)

Now hit Ctrl + L and bring up the Levels adjustment tool, apply the following settings to it:

Now the settings for Levels might differ slightly depending on the cloud render outcome, however the ultimate goal is to bring more contrast to the cloud so it gives us more lighting variation, as shown below:

Change the blending mode of the cloud layer to “Color Dodge”, you will have the following effect:

Now here is the interest part of the tutorial – we’re going to max-out the effect by playing with the cloud layer.

Duplicate the cloud layer a few times, apply following layer blending mode, opacity and layer mask to each layer:

and you will have the following effect:

You can see now we have some very dynamic contrast placed on the sword. They will look good when we apply the crack texture later on in the tutorial.

Step 3

Go back to the background layer, grab a big soft round brush with a 30% flow and opacity settings, do a few single clicks as shown below:

You will see now we light up the background a bit – however not too much. This effect will reflect when we add the crack texture later on in the tutorial.

I decide to add some effect on the bottom of the sword. So I duplicate the original cloud layer once, change the blending mode to “Normal” and drag it below the sword layer and above the background layer, use the Free Transform tool to resize it to a small size, position it as shown below:

Name this layer as “light”, duplicate it a few times, and position them as shown below:

and here is the effect so far:

Step 4

We can now add the crack texture onto the sword. Load the Crack Texture into Photoshop, select a portion of it with the Lasso tool (40px feather), copy and paste it onto the canvas and put it on top of all previous layers, name the layer as “crack”:

Make sure you resize the layer to roughly the size of the sword, as shown below:

Change the blending mode of the crack layer to be “color dodge”. Duplicate the crack layer a few times, position each duplicated layer as shown below:

Maintain the blending mode for all crack texture layers to be “color dodge”, apply layer mask according to the screenshot above.

For the top crack texture layer, add the following levels adjustment layer to it (with clipping mask optin enabled):

You will have the following effect:

Step 5

Now we can add some image adjustments layers to fine-tune the effect. I have the following two adjustment layers on top of all layers:

Color Balance

Curves

and you will have the following effect:

That’s it pretty much it! For the final effect I added some brushwork on the top, here is my end result: (click to enlarge)

That’s all for this tutorial! I hope this can give you more ideas about the use of layer blending, cloud filter and applying textures in Photoshop. Hopefully you will find those steps in the tutorial useful and the end result inspiratinal :)

Till next time, have a great day!

In this post, I will show you 20 awesome photo manipulative wallpapar from desktopography.net, hopefully you will enjoy them as much as I did and find them inspirational.

And by the way, here is an introduction of desktopography.net:

Designers and developers spend about 90% of their waking life in front of a computer so the most appealing genre for a wallpaper would be one that has beautiful design mixed with the all important aspect of being outdoors.

What we see everyday can affect our mood and state of mind, enhance your desktop with a wallpaper creation from desktopography and feel the essence of nature and the outdoor existence on your computer. Bring tranquility to your desktop, feel the wilderness and give your background a breath of fresh air..

Source: desktopography.net

Here goes the list, enjoy!

That’s it for this post! Hope you enjoy it and find it inspirational!

In this post, I will provide 5 Simple, Yet Useful Photoshop “How-to”s for Absolute Beginners. Take a look and hopefully you will see after all, Photoshop is not that hard to start with!

Before we start, please note that this tutorial is made in Windows with Adobe Photoshop CS3 and CS4, options may vary in version and OS platform.

How to Draw a Perfect Circle/Square

This might be the first question every beginner would ask. So let’s take a look at the toolbox and find the set of drawing tools as shown below: (to expand, left-click on the rectangular tool and hold)

and You can use those tools to draw rectangule or oval shapes, as shown below:

Now here is the trick: if you would like to draw a PERFECT circle or a square, you must hold down the Shift Key while dragging your mouse:

How to Adjust Brush Opacity and Flow

This is an interest topic – it may seem to be really simple, but the amount of emails and comments I received in regards to this question made me think to include it here.

The options are in fact quite easy to find – if you select the brush tool first, on the option bar above you will the opacity and flow adjustment right there, as shown below:

How to Load Custom Brushsets into Photoshop

These days there are many free Photoshop brushsets you can download from the net, but how to load those beautiful brushset into Photoshop? Here are the steps:

Click on the Brush Tool in the toolbox and click on the drop down arrow next to the brush shape symbol, as shown below”

Next, click on the right arrow on the right hand side of the brush pallette:

You will see a list of options appearing, select the “Load Brushes” option from the list:

and a window will pop up, choose the brushset from the folder and click on “load”:

and that’s it! You will see the newly loaded brushsets in the brush panel:

How to Draw Paths with Pen Tool

Pen Tool can be use to create paths – however, it’s not enabled by default. If you select Pen Tool and straight away to use it, you will see Shapes instead of Paths, as shown below:

So to change it to Path, follow the steps below:

Click onthe Pen Tool in the toolbox and you will a bunch of options appearing on the top bar, click on the second symbol as shown below to change it to Paths:

and that’s it, you can now draw pure paths on your canvas as shown below:

How to Quickly Create Guides in Photoshop

Personally I think this is a rather important and useful function in Photoshop. When you design interfaces (eg. website mockups), you will need to create a sets of guides to ensure precision. But exactly how do we do this?

Here are the steps:

Firstly, if you haven’t turn the Ruler option on, Press Ctrl + R to turn it on, you will see the rulers appearing on top and right of the canvas:

Now if you move your mouse over on the ruler, then left-click and drag, you will see the guides appears on the canvas, as shown below:

and if you would like to clear the guides, simply go to View > Clear Guides

One extra tip with guides: if you right-click on the ruler, you will see a list of options to change the measurements, as shown below:

That’s it for this post! Hope you find it helpful and if you have any further question, just drop me a comment below and I will try my best to assist.

Cheers and have a great day!

We will be using some drawing techniques, plus customer brushsets and filter effects along the way, plus I will show you a clever use of Photoshop brush to create special effect around the sphere.

Here is a preview of the final effect: (click to enlarge)

PSD File for this Tutorial

You can have this PSD File for only $2.00 via Paypal! Click the link below and you will be taken to the Paypal checkout page, after payment you will be redirect to the download page automatically.

Ok let’s get started!

To complete this tutorial, you will need the following stocks:

Abstract Brushset 1

Abstract Brushset 2

Step 1

Create a new document sized 800 * 800px, fill the background with black colour. Create a new layer called “bottom light” and use a 250px soft round brush with white colour, do a single click in the centre of the canvas, then resize it  (Ctrl + T) to a very thin shape as shown below:

Grab the eclipse tool (U key) from the toolbox, create a new layer called “sphere” and draw a circle on top of the light, as shown below:

Apply the following layer blending options to this sphere layer:

Drop Shadow

Inner Shadow

Gradient Overlay

and you will have the following effect:

Step 2

Create a new layer on top of the “sphere” layer and use the eclipse tool to draw another oval shape to the top of the sphere. Name this layer as “highlight top” and change the blending mode to “overlay”, drop the opacity to around 40%.

You will have the following effect:

Duplicate this highlight layer once and apply the following Gaussian Blur settings to the duplicated layer:

change the blending mode of this duplicated layer to “soft light”, you will have the following effect:

Step 3

Now let’s add some irregular lighting effect to the sphere. Create a new layer just above the sphere layer, use a soft white round brush to so a few single click around the sphere, set the blending mode to “soft light”.

Hint: make sure to paint some light on the bottom of the sphere, this will help adding more depth into the image.

The following effect is what I have so far: (the light strip on the right was done using the free tranform tool + a soft white round brush on a new layer with “normal” blending mode:)

Create a new “Shadow” layer on top of the “bottom light” (first layer) and use the same method as described in step 1 except using black colour instead of white, do a single click and resize it into the thin shape.

Change the blending mode of the shadow layer to “overlay”, you will have the following effect:

Step 4

Now we can add some effect around the sphere to make it look mysterious. Use the abstract brushset 1 we downloaded, choose any one of them and reduce its brush size to a smaller size, paint around the sphere as shown below:

Create another new layer and use the Abstract brushset 2 to paint some patterns on top of the sphere, as shown below:

(Hint: use the Free Tranform tool to distort, warp the new layer to create variations)

Here is what I have so far:

Add a new texture layer just above the background layer, and use the same brushset as we used just now, but this time with its orginal size, paint some patterns on the lower half of the canvas, as shown below:

Make sure you mix different brushset and set the opacity and flow to both around 50%.

Step 5

Now let’s add the golden colour on the sphere. The trick here to add a Color Balance adjustment layer just above the original “Sphere” layer, with the following settings:

and you will have the following effect:

add the following Curves adjustment layer on top of all layers:

and you will have the following effect:

Step 6

Now we can do some final touches to the image. Firstly let’s flatten the image, duplicate the background layer once and apply the following Radial Blur settings to the duplicated layer:

Change the blending mode to “Screen” and you will have the following effect:

Now we don’t really want to the whole image to be blurred, so we can add a layer mask as shown below to hide some parts:

Also apply the following Smart Sharpen settings to the background layer:

and you will have the following final effect: (click to enlarge)

That’s it for this tutorial! Of course you can further enhance the effect and try out more colour schemes and filter effects, but that’s totally up to you.

Hope you enjoy it and find it useful! Until next time, have a great day!